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Early care and education in the United States is not a single system. It is a fragmented patchwork built across colonization, slavery, gendered labor norms, immigration policy, and market ideology. What looks like a workforce crisis is not accidental — it is structural. This episode traces how care became a market instead of a public good, how professionalization reshaped whose knowledge counted, and why sacrifice became embedded in the field’s identity.

Works & Scholars Referenced

Audre Lorde — The Cancer Journals (1980); Sister Outsider (1984); A Burst of Light (1988)

Robin Wall Kimmerer — Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)

Gloria Ladson-Billings — “Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy” (1995)

Arundhati Roy — “The Pandemic Is a Portal” (2020)

Ai-jen Poo — The Age of Dignity (2015)

Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers — They Were Her Property (2019)

Thavolia Glymph — Out of the House of Bondage (2008)

Lea J.E. Austin — Early Childhood Workforce Index (CSCCE, 2024)

Films & Documentaries

Dawnland (2018) — Indigenous child removal and sovereignty

Stamped from the Beginning (2023) — Racism in U.S. history

The Big Payback (2023) — Reparations and structural inequality

You can find the full transcript, citations, and extended reading list at waginglove.org

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Care has always been here.

The question is whether we will finally build a system that protects the people who provide it.

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